HERSTORY IN THE MAKING

YOUNG M.A OPENS UP ABOUT HER SEXUALITY, HER LOVE LIFE, AND WHAT IT’S REALLY LIKE BEING AN OUT LESBIAN IN HIP-HOP

WORDS ROXY BOURDILLON

PHOTO SOUTHBANK CENTRE

I’m uncharacteristically nervous before interviewing Young M.A. I can’t help but fret that the swaggering Brooklyn rapper will be way too cool for someone as terminally uncool as me.

I decide my best strategy is to play up the obvious differences between her – a fearless hip-hop artist who opened for Beyoncé, has over 200 million YouTube views and spits her male counterparts under the nightclub table – and me – a slightly posh, very silly writer who often trips up over her own high heels. As I dial her number, I pray she gets the joke. It’s a journalistic gamble, but luckily one that pays off. She cracks up when I ask, doing my best impression of Dame Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey, “So M.A, have you really been getting bitches since the third grade?”

About DIVA Magazine

We are over the moon to have YouTuber Shannon Beveridge on our cover this month. As well as looking super fly in our exclusive photoshoot, she talks to DIVA editor Carrie Lyell about being the role model she so desperately needed when she was younger, and tells us why she’ll never let the cameras into another relationship.
Also in this issue:
- Danielle Brooks tells Roxy Bourdillon what she really thinks of that controversial Orange Is The New Black story line
- Young M.A on being accepted as a lesbian rapper
- How to be an author: Lesfic author Kiki Archer shares her tips
- Living with HIV: How austerity is harming the most vulnerable women in our community
- Believe: An extract from Nicola Adams’ new memoir
- Travel with Pride: An activist’s guide
- Bi family: “I walked my dad down the aisle at his civil partnership”
Plus interviews with Elliott Sailors, Rhyannon Styles and more!